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An Offshore Account

I don’t like to be late.And I don’t like to be lost.I find both states deeply unsettling,
breaking, as they do, the temporal and spatial maps we hold fast to in our
heads.

So, if I manage to be late or lost, my
brain does little intracranial loops and tends to get a bit cross.But crossness in the face of your own
stupidity is a waste of time and energy – you need to save crossness for things
that are important.

I started to feel just a tad uneasy when I
could not find my flight in the departure board, so I checked and double-checked,
but no, it was not there. I walked up to
the check in desk (which was suspiciously quiet) and asked:

“Where do I go for this flight?”

“Aberdeen” came the reply.

I let that sink in for a while – looked at
my ticket and felt pretty stupid.There
I was, in Glasgow airport, looking at a ticket to Orkney from Aberdeen
airport.A mere 3 hours away by road –
and the flight was departing in 90 minutes.

Ah.

Lost and late.Well maybe not lost, given that I was where I
thought I ought to have been, but where I ought to have been was somewhere
else.

Ah.Shit.

I produced my credit card, booked on to the
next flight – which was at 10 am the next morning – and spent a not
insubstantial sum patching up the errors of my ways.I went back to my hotel, ate some cheese, drank
some wine and went to bed.In the end,
it was the only option I had.

The next morning I was neither late nor
lost, turning up at the correct airport, the correct time.Glasgow continued to outshine itself, with a
clear sky morning promising fair weather to come.At just past nine in the morning, I was
shocked to see a tall woman in a sky blue ball gown walking down a grey concrete
walkway by the rush hour busy road.The
whole scene was strange beyond experience, like a mirage brought on by the heat
and repeat viewing of The Matrix.

“Either a very early start or a late
finish” I suggested to the driver who agreed, but pointed out that we were
passing a University and that there was some form of graduation at this time of
year.“They like to get dressed up,
especially the lasses,” he added in a way that suggested he knew what he was
talking about.Never judge a book by its
cover.

Much as the night before had been a (self-inflicted)
stuff-up of massive proportion, there was an up side.Taking the later flight would mean I would be
on the same plane as my brother, who being older and (so he says) so much wiser
than me, had actually arrived at the right airport at the right time.

For many people a trip with your brother
may not be that remarkable.But we
aren’t that sort of family.As a round
figure we had not really lived together, at the same address, for 30 years, and
the number of holidays we had taken together at any time, without other family
being present, was precisely zero.Much
later, in the long evening twilight of an Orkney over a pint, we would realise
that it would be probably the first time we had ever slept in the same room
together. This really was a long way from adjacent rooms in a damp and failing
cottage in Somerset.

The dozen of islands that form Orkney are
scattered across the sea about 30 miles beyond the northern tip of
Scotland.The number of islands depends
on the state of the tide and the shape of the wind.To the west there is nothing but water until
you reach Canada, to the east lies Norway.The islands spread over three sheets of the Landranger map series, that
classic of mapping with the bright red cover that weathers down to trademark pale
pink with use.1:50,000 scale, perfect
for almost all things, wonderful in its detail and miraculous in completion. Much can be learned from the close observation
of these maps; old names, out of place today, pass on a history that can be
read and understood.Viking names;
farming names; field names.Names from a
time when each place had a special role and purpose.Names that would tell you if there was water
underfoot, or peat for winter fires. Summer places, winter places, places where
eagles nested and seals gave birth.The
land made the words and the words we gave shaped our understanding the the land.These maps may well be one of the finest, but
least appreciated, accomplishments of human endeavour.

With a little practice, and a shot of
imagination, you can use maps like these to build a picture of a world you
cannot see.You can see ahead of
yourself and over the next hill. The
flow-lines of contours allow you to build the shape of the land in your own
head, they allow you to predict things you have not seen.In the hands of an expert, this skill can
become close to miraculous, and even I can manage some crude approximation of
this skill.These maps allow for a kind
of spatially creative magic that builds the shape of the land within your own head
– the maps do not show the reality of the land, they are a 2D cypher of a 3D
planet.By definition they cannot be accurate,
the world is not Cartesian, but the map is.They are a wondrous tool for the creation of a mental illusion, which
often bears a striking resemblance to the real world.

But when you start to look, and maybe think
a bit, the maps show more that just the relative locations of objects and the
shape of the land.They also contain an
archaeology of the people who made them.The maps I grew up with contained symbols for Post Offices and public
phone boxes, both of which were of far more significance than they are
today.Their inclusion says something
about the society that existed within the landscape in which they were
found.And the removal of these from the
maps tells us something about how the world around us has changed.The symbol at a road junction which said
‘here is a device with which you can talk to the world’ has become as redundant
as the device itself.Equally, on the 30
year old maps that sit on my shelves, you can find the location of both pubs
and churches (with or without a tower).These were included as places of both community and connection, where people
filled themselves with one form of spirit or another.I wonder how long these symbols will retain
their utility as we abandon community and connection.

For maps to be able to work their wondrous
magic they need to be based on meticulous observation and measurements.Hundreds of distances and angles, forming
triangles that march over the landscape in a remarkable trigonometry.Maps are based in the human observation of
the world as it actually is.I may
declare the world flat, and assign it four corners, but the measurements say
something else.The measurements are not
biased by politics, cant or religion. Additional lines can be added to the maps
after wars and agreements, but the triangles and measurements remain unchanged:
political maps are a human invention laid over the top of the shape of the
land.

Today, we take maps and their technological
surrogates for granted – we have come to rely on them.Maps plot our journeys forward, both in time
and space.And we think that we clever
beyond measure.

But when you stand in the landscape of
Orkney, you are challenged to think again about the measure of our achievement.

Possibly more than anywhere else on Earth,
Orkney gives us a view into the landscape of the past and the way that early
people mapped and predicted their world. When you stand in the centre of the Stones of
Stenness and come to see that the stones line up with specific events – solar
and lunar – you cannot help but be amazed.How was this done?How did the
engineers of the Stone Age create these great maps of the sky and the
future?Stone circles that speak of both
direction and time, crafted by hand, pulled from the Earth by a people we have
the temerity to call primitive.

The landscape of Orkney is rich in human
symbols and measurement.The bumps and
barrows, henges and hill top circles are the result of measurement and observation
just as meticulous as those used by our modern mapmakers. Stones align with each other, with hilltops
and with solstice sunrises.Precisely
what these alignments meant to the life of the people who built them we may
never know, but the intact Stone Age landscape of the Orkneys suggest a degree
of sophistication that was never communicated to me at school. The laughable
New Age nonsense of Druids or the conspiracy of Alien Intervention devalues the
simple fact that these structures are remarkable. But one thing is entirely
clear; the Stones of Orkney are based on the observation of the world as it is
– or was 4000 years ago.Far too many of
the stones align with the events of space for their placements to be luck.

The light that shines down the entrance
tunnel of Maeshowe on the winter solstice meant to do so, and the Barrow was
built by people who wanted that to happen.We don’t know why, but we do they achieved it.And
yet it seems we are still not fully ready to give the people who build these
structure from the cooperative Orkney stone the full credit they deserve.

While we were stood within the circle of Stones
of Stenness we were told in no uncertain terms that the shape of the stones
themselves had no meaning.This seems
fair enough after you have seen the broken stones at the Ring of Brodga where a
recent (ish) lightning strike felled one of the monoliths – but as a general statement
it seems to be a rather sweeping one.The care with which both the location of the stone circles and the
stones within them suggests (at least to me) that ‘any old stone’ would not
have been chosen.Would Capability Brown
have designed the sweeping aspects of his landscapes and then said ‘just stick
a big rock up there’ to finish off?I
don’t think so. And neither, I suspect, would the builders of the circles on
Orkney.

At Skara Brae an even more remarkable
expression of the care these Stone Age Orkadians took in the use of stone
comes, not from a grand monument, but from domestic furniture.In 1850 a Stone Age village started to
reappear from the sand dunes after a winter storm.This was a village that is still recognisable
as such today. The round houses have
beds made from the flat stones and ‘fish tanks’ that were lined with clay where
bait or lobsters could be kept fresh and alive.But most remarkably, some of the houses have storage cupboards –
side-boards if you like – with a wide flat top and shelves.Some people think these may have been used in
some form of ritual manner, but others suggest that they were simply storage
units.In fact if you copied the layout
of this stone furniture, gave it a strange, vaguely Nordic name you, could sell
it in Ikea.There are grindstones next
to at least one of these ‘cupboards’ and many of the houses have ‘box gutter’
plumbing to take away all the foul things a family can produce.Many, many people live today in houses that
have less amenities than these. And in case you missed what I was saying there
– these Stone Age houses had a form of plumbing, built of stone stabs that
still functions today.

It takes almost no imagination to see how
families could live in these houses, gathered around the central fire and
eating meals of grilled sea-bass and shell fish. And when you bring this to mind, the idea that
the same people, sophisticated and recognisable, would just say ‘F**k it, just
use any old stone,’ in their circles and monuments, seems even more far-fetched.

And where did all this kind of thinking
start – well, it started right here: when I found a benchmark cut into one of
the stones of the Ring of Brodga.A
benchmark is a sign that a mapmaker has been here and determined the height
above sea level – it’s a fixed point around which the information of the
cartographer flows, and from which maps are drawn.A modern symbol on a Stone-Age monument,
thousands of years apart in their creation, but linked by the common purpose of
their manufacture – to help people navigate the world.

People have lived and found their way on
Orkney for thousands of years, and for a few days I was glad to join them.

9 comments:

Great comment, Stuart. Our current generations do show a great deal of hubris when we think everything of note or taking skill only takes place now. I rather feel the same way about our planet. It's the height of conceit to think that we are the only place in the universe with intelligent life. Glad you had an outing with your brother. Perhaps its the the forerunner of things to come.

Hari OmLove that last paragraph!!! As always, Stewart, you took us along with you. As a point of interest, it has just been announced Maes Howe is to close after this summer season, due to 'health and safety' concerns about folk having to cross the main road from the car park! the obvious thing would be 'bridge!'... but no such mention. No doubt it will be something elaborate and twice as costly! YAM xx

Thanks for another great piece of writing. During my recent big overseas adventure I visited the Outer Hebrides and, I'm sad to now admit, the Orkney Isles held no attraction. If only I had read this sooner!

What an interesting place to visit, and not one for the common man. I read there are 67 islands there and so much history. Your pictures give a good idea of the beauty of the place, and its wildness too.

What an interesting post, Stewart. I've learned so much about Orkney and the stone homes and barrows that you photographed. It would be awe-inspiring to observe these sites and realize the engineering and insight involved (not to mention the work without modern earth moving machines)! I am often lost but never late. However, my adrenaline would be pumping at a flight mishap like yours. I don't fly often and when I do, I like to be hours early and at the right airport!

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